Learning to love seventh graders.

Every Sunday morning I spend an hour with the seventh graders at Grabill Missionary Church. We usually have a a group of about 15 students, and I have two high school students who join us to offer a different perspective (and to help with crowd control).

I am amazed at the amount of energy these students have at 9:00 on a Sunday morning. Apparently, the worries of a thirteen-year-old aren't enough to cause a lack of sleep. Of course, I usually don't get home from work until around midnight and then spend about an hour planning my lesson for the morning. This doesn't exactly leave adequate time to rest up for the surprisingly exhausting hour of teaching.

An average Sunday School hour includes about ten minutes of hang out time in the basement, ten minutes of chatter when we finally sit down together (including announcements, reviewing the latest movie, and various distractions), half an hour of discussion (which really means 15 minutes of talking about what I've planned and 15 minutes of other conversation), a few minutes for prayer requests and prayer, and then as soon as I say "Amen," they scatter. I wait around to make sure they all head upstairs in time to find their parents to go to the 10:15 service.

Last week (10/27) was one of my worst teaching experiences ever. There was an almost complete lack of focus, there were students who answered as I was calling on someone else, there was endless chatter. I felt helpless. I didn't know what to do. I tried to bring them back to the topic. I tried raising my voice. I tried sitting silently until they figured out that it was time for them to do the same. I tried the "respect" speech. Eventually, I told them that I was frustrated and that I hoped they would come back the following week ready to listen and learn.

When they scattered, I looked at the one high school student who was there that week and we just shook our heads. We tried to make sense of what had just happened, and decided that we'd move from the circle of couches to the chairs that we use on Wednesday nights when the whole group is together.

I wanted to go home and cry. I was so ready to just tell the youth pastors that I couldn't do it anymore and that they needed to find someone else to take over these hooligans. We had a Newcomer Lunch that day and I told one of them that I "hate seventh graders."

I felt like the worst youth worker. There were moments during the summer that I felt like a failure at my job, but this just hurt me to the core. I thought I was a teacher. I thought I would be able to do this. I committed a year to these kids, and I wanted to be faithful to that.

I talked to my dad about it, like I do about most ministry-related issues. He suggested that I simply re-teach the material. I liked that idea. It meant that I would just have to review it and come up with some different examples and ways of explaining the metaphors. (Jesus is the Bread of Life, Light of the World, and the Good Shepherd.) It meant that while I was at GOMAD with Senior High Campus Life this weekend, I wouldn't have to think too much about Sunday School.

Ha! That's funny.

I thought about my seventh graders all weekend.

"Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It's as if they are showing you the way."

The "Don Miller Character" says that in "Blue Like Jazz." I'm not sure whether it's in the book, but it's in the movie. It caught me the last time I watched it, because it's so true. I don't think Don was talking about junior high students, but that's how it worked for me. At least, in part.

One of the volunteers who had been recruited to join Leo for the weekend works with junior high students. I told him that I taught seventh grade Sunday School and he told me that he loved junior high. I was confused and convicted. I had spent so much time complaining about my crazy kids that I had forgotten that I was supposed to love them. I had forgotten that they aren't just a group of wild, distracted, talkative children.

They're children of God. And simply because they are people, they deserve my love. They are valuable. They are fun. They have real questions and real struggles. They need to learn, whether or not they want to. They deserve my time and attention, my lesson preparation, my care.

And I decided that they deserved my honest explanation of how I was feeling about them. So on Sunday morning I stood up on stage in front of my students and told them that I had wanted to give up on them. I told them that I had been frustrated and sad and angry and confused. I told them that I loved them and cared about them and wanted them to learn and understand how much God loves them. I told them that I wanted us to all come together on Sunday mornings to focus and be serious.

We talked through Psalm 139, which was not part of the curriculum we're using for Sunday School now. The night before, I read the Psalm to the Leo students who attended GOMAD. I love it. I wish everyone would believe it as Truth. That everyone would believe that God loves us, made each of us carefully, thinks of us, searches us, never leaves us, sees us. It's so important to know and truly believe those words. I wanted my seventh graders to hear those verses. I wanted them to even begin to understand what it means to be loved by the God who created the universe. It's difficult to convince anyone that he or she is worthy of this kind of love, but it's especially frustrating for teenagers who are facing all kinds of pressure and are in a developmental stage that predisposes them to self-centeredness, comparison, and a lack of self-esteem.

I want to be one voice that represents love. I want to be one person who won't leave. I want to be one "adult" who encourages but doesn't allow them to get away with everything. I want to love them in the best way I can. I want to let God love them through me.

I am so thankful for that guy who helped me see that seventh graders can be loved. I'm thankful for a God who is love. And I am thankful for my crazy, out-of-control, loud, obnoxious seventh grade students. I love them. I like them. And I'm glad I have them this year.

I hope they're glad they have me.